


Shinra's (One-winged) Angels

by AyumiUK (weirdpianist)



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Crack, Crack Pairings, Ecchi, F/F, F/M, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Gender or Sex Swap, Genderbending, Genderswap, M/M, Multi, Other, Out of Character, Parody, Time Travel, crackfic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-21
Updated: 2013-09-04
Packaged: 2017-12-12 13:38:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/812176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weirdpianist/pseuds/AyumiUK
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She was a boy, he was a girl~"<br/>"Aerith, I don't think that's quite right..."<br/>"Of course it is," she smiled cryptically and faded away.<br/>"Wait!" And Cloud woke up as his fifteen years old self... in a genderbent alternate universe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Clouds and Melons

**Author's Note:**

> This plotcactuar wouldn’t stop 1000 needle’ing me on the forehead until I started writing.

Melons. Cloud Strife, a dashing twenty eight years old man was being suffocated by a pair of warm, squishy melons. _‘Judging by the softness, these must be rotten melons… they do say putrefaction generates heat…’_ Raising his hands, he tried to move the supposed fruits from his nose… **CRUNCH!**

Ouch, his face hurt… maybe it was some kind of monster and… realizing his eyes were shut, he slowly opened them, blinking at the harsh light.

“My, Sapphire! Such violence is unbecoming of a lady. A slap should have sufficed,” exclaimed a beautiful red headed woman, who promptly knelt to cast Cure on the poor girl. Sapphire crossed her arms over her ample assets and huffed in annoyance.

Looking at his attacker, Cloud promptly fainted.

Noting the blonde’s nose was still bleeding, a black haired woman in full SOLDIER uniform turned to her apprentice and said, “Zelia, go fetch a doctor. Genevieve healed her broken nose, but it’s still bleeding severely…”

“Okay!” Zelia Fair, SOLDIER 2nd Class saluted and headed towards the hospital floor.

Gene rolled her eyes, “Angela, dear… we have PHS for a reason.”

The black haired woman simply shrugged, “Zelia likes the exercise. It’s that or squats, so I try to make her walk as much as possible.”

“Hm…”

000

His priorities were probably fried, but he couldn’t really get over the fact that fem!Sephiroth still wore the same clothes as her male counterpart. Blood still dripped from his nose, even after the hot girl in red healed it.

Wait a minute. Backtrack a little…

Hot girl in red... red hair… walking by Sephiroth’s side… Oh crap, that was Genesis!

Wait one more minute.

_‘Did I just call that LOVELESS fanatic hot… twice?’_

A small part of Cloud tried to remind him that his nose was bleeding due to a female Sephiroth. He stomped on it until it was reduced to dust.

Opening his eyes, Cloud couldn’t help but focus on the silver haired woman. Dammit, even as a woman she was tall.

Suddenly a girl’s voice broke the silence, “Angela, the nurses were being mean again!”

Turning to the voice, he could only mutter, “Damn, Zack and Angeal are hot too,” before fainting again.

000

Cloud woke up to find himself in a strange room. The wall was painted in pastel tones with apple motif and the floor was covered by a fluffy beige carpet. On a table, he could see an assortment of materia, all held in cute straw baskets decorated with ribbons. Was that a _pink bra_ on the chair? There was also a four poster bed with lace curtains on the other side of the room and some wooden chests scattered around the corners.

He was about to get up when the door opened to reveal Zelia, bouncing in her blue SOLDIER second class uniform. “So you’re awake! Took you long enough!”

“Where am I?” Cloud asked quietly.

“Oh! I’m sorry; my name is Zelia Fair, SOLDIER second class. You’re in my room right now. Well, mine and Angela’s. After you fainted, I went looking for a doctor, but the nurses kicked me out of the hospital floor before I could find one. Sleeping on the floor is bad for your health, so I brought you here! Also, I’ve never seen you before. Are you a new girl?”

Dazed, Cloud automatically responded, “Claudia.”

Seconds later, his brain caught up with his mouth and his eyes widened. ‘Claudia?’

Looking down, he let out a girly shriek and fainted yet again.


	2. Bath, Explanations, Training, Friendship and Menarche

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Cloud discovers the meaning of Menarche and adapts to his new life... somewhat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll still refer to Cloud as a male, because he doesn't think of himself as female. And, in this story at least, never will.  
> Of course, other characters can't read his mind and will refer to him as a female, since, you know... he's a girl in this universe.

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Cloud sighed, “Damn it, Yuffie. I’m never drinking with you again.”

He then proceeded to roll his shoulders, ignoring the strange feeling of something bouncing on his chest. Cloud sat up on the soft bed and finally looked around… “Eeep!” Nope, not him. Must have been some rat or whatever. He didn’t _squeal_. He shook his head to sort his thoughts and didn’t hear the soft click of the door nor the _tap tap_ of bare feet.

“Hey, Claudia? Are you alright now?”

Startled, Cloud looked up… to find a very naked fem!Zack (how did he even know it was Zack?) holding a pink towel over her right shoulder, water dripping from her deliciously fragrant hair.

“Aw, your nose is bleeding again! Gene mustn’t have healed it right… hold on, use this.” She handed him a frilly handkerchief. “Ah! It’s even worse now! Angela, help!” Zelia screamed, holding Cloud’s head uncomfortably close to her chest. It was a testament of Hojo’s genius that our hero didn’t even pass out from the blood loss, which would have killed a lesser (wo)man.

Angela threw open the bathroom door and ran to her apprentice, grabbing one of the materia baskets on the way. _‘They… were bathing together…?’_ Cloud’s brain rebooted.

This time, enhancements or not, he did succumb to the evils of perv.

000

As time went by, Cloud narrowed the explanations to his current situation to four options:

1: He went in a coma and this was all a dream;

2: This was some virtual reality made to torture him (actually plausible, considering his many enemies);

3: Everybody died and Zack somehow managed to convince everybody in the Lifestream to pull a prank on him (he remembered Zack mentioning something like that a long time ago… or some years in the future, he wasn’t sure anymore.)

And finally…

4: He  time traveled to an alternate reality in which everyone was the opposite gender.

The scariest part, he decided, was that they were _all valid_. (He briefly wondered when his life had gotten so weird that all those things could happen… only to sink to the ground in a moment of depression.)

000

Barely a month had passed and he was somehow getting used to an army dominated by women. Except for their like of make-up and fashion, they weren’t that different from their male counterparts. They gossiped the same and would often gather to vote on the sexiest Turk (which happened to be a guy named Neil at the moment), much as he remembered from his Shinra days.

000

Since he was stuck in this place, he would excel and accomplish his old dream of being SOLDIER. Not that he cared anymore, but being in SOLDIER gave him a higher level of clearance and he would be able to interact with Zack a lot more than his infantry(wo)man status allowed. The fact SOLDIER, even third class, earned twenty times as much money and could choose their own missions was an added incentive to succeed.

He had mixed feelings about retaining his enhancements; on one hand, the strength and extra abilities would make becoming SOLDIER much easier. On the other, how would he explain them?

He decided to worry later.

So that was why we could find him at a training room everyday, from 5 to 11 am, at the cafeteria for an hour long pause and then back at the training room until 6 pm, when he went to the communal bath and grabbed a quick dinner. He barely interacted with his colleagues, as his old self had isolated him(her)self long before he had come back and any attempt at socializing now would be viewed with suspicion. Besides, socializing took time he didn’t have.

000

Months later, Cloud woke up to something wet… down _there_.

At the bathroom, he looked at his panties (he never thought he’d miss boxers—those things were too tight for his liking!) and saw blood.

_‘Great, I had completely forgotten women at my age had to deal with it.’_ To complicate matters further, he hadn’t prepared for this and… damn, that was humiliating!

That’s how we found our dear heroine running at the halls, toilet paper crudely folded to stop the blood flow. In an act of mercy from the Goddess, he ran into Zack- _Zelia_ , his mind corrected.

“Hey, Claudia! Why are you running in the halls again? Something happened?”

His red face must have given something away, because Zelia grabbed his hand and lead him to the floor’s restroom.

“Okay, now that we are alone, tell me what happened and we can solve this together,” said Zelia, in a soothing tone she rarely used.

“I uh… there’s blood down there,” he said, leaning on the sparkly clean wall.

“Blood? You mean it’s your time of the month?”

“Hm… I think so.”

“Oh,” the woman sighed, “I had forgotten how much Menarche sucks.”

“What?” Asked Cloud, confusion evident in his (her, from Zelia’s prespective) eyes.

“Menarche is the first menstruation,” she explained. “How old are you anyway?”

“I’m fifteen.”

“Wow, this is kind of late for Midgar.”

“I’m from Nibelheim,” he mumbled. “There’s a Mako reactor there.”

“A country girl? That explains everything.”

“Oh yeah?” Cloud asked, momentarily forgetting his predicament, “And where do you come from?”

“Me? Gongaga,” Zelia grinned proudly.

He couldn’t help grinning at that. This conversation was oddly reminiscent of their first meeting, back when most things were still okay.

As unlikely as it was, Zelia retorted, “Do you even know Gongaga?”

Deciding to test this, Cloud continued, “No, but it sounds very country-like.”

“Nibelheim too,” the SOLDIER stuck her tongue out and crossed her arms. “I've never been there before, but there's a Mako reactor, right? Midgar-”

“-has the most Mako, but everyone else has none,” he completed.

They exchanged grins for a while, until Zelia remembered what they were doing in the first place.

“Oh, right! I don’t carry pads with me ever since joining SOLDIER, but Angela keeps a stash for newcomers, the mother hen. Sometimes, I think she should be a school teacher or nurse…until I see her with a sword, that is.” The woman grabbed her friend’s hand, “You should go to the doctor later and get a prescription for the Pill. Sometimes, we have to camp during missions and can’t change pads. Worse, no showers for days will make you stink horribly. You won’t want to suffer that anytime soon,” she shuddered, opening the restroom’s door.

Something told Cloud that this scenario had happened to the female version of his friend.

And he really, really didn't want to know.

000

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somehow, this took a completely different route than I imagined. And Cloud kept his braids for sentimental reasons.


	3. Lunch with Genevieve part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Puberty would always be a pain, but, as Cloud discovered, females had it much worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can you guess who Ragna's male counterpart is?

Cloud had been feeling odd chest pains for quite some time.

At first, he simply ignored the strange discomfort.

One day, though, he was dressing himself when **it** happened— his bra didn’t fit anymore! Thinking it had shrunk, he tried another. And another. And another. Our hero valiantly went through his whole wardrobe before giving up. (In case you were wondering, that means he spent ten minutes on five items of undergarment… which is kind of pitiful, considering he had been wearing them daily for almost four months.

Deciding it wasn’t that important, Cloud went to the cafeteria.

_Boing boing._

Huh. His chest wasn’t hurting anymore. Though he was getting some stares…

000

“To those who don’t know, my name is Genevieve Rhapsodos,” said woman bowed dramatically. “Instructors Ragna and Zelia caught the flu and Angela is on a mission.” She inspected the assembled SOLDIER candidates and smirked, “I don’t usually train anyone, so consider this a treat.”

Before the excited murmurs could get louder, Genevieve shouted, “I want fifty laps now!”

As he began running, Cloud felt his chest aching again. He noted the faster he ran, the more it hurt. When it got too uncomfortable, he stopped, clutching his chest.

“Strife, was it? Is there something wrong?”

“Madam,” he saluted, “I…”

Before he could continue, the woman frowned, “Are you wearing a bra?” Cloud blushed. “I guess not. Well, go sit at a corner until the training ends.”

000

Three hours later, Genevieve approached Cloud. Without uttering a word, she beckoned him to follow her.

When they were alone, she pinched the bridge of her nose and finally spoke, “What possessed you to come train without any chest bindings? Especially you, Claudia.”

At his startled look, she said, “Angela won’t stop talking about you. She’s always going on and on about how seriously you take training and how she wished Zelia would do the same.”

“Oh,” Cloud was speechless.

Gene looked at his eyes, “And that’s why I think what happened today was a fluke.”

“Ma’am. It’s… the bras didn’t fit.” He blushed. “None of them did…”

After an awkward pause, the woman finally opened her mouth to reply, “Well, in this case… let’s have lunch together. I don’t usually eat at the cafeteria and it’ll be faster than meeting later.”

Hesitantly, he asked, “Where are we going?”

“Oh, there’s this quaint little restaurant near the theater.”

000

Quaint little restaurant where? No matter the angle, Cloud could only see a five star restaurant, complete with red carpet and hordes of impeccably dressed waiters. Then again, Genevieve probably thought a ten thousand gil note was pocket change. Rich bastard.

A mousy man garbed in a white dolman and checkered pants approached them. “Oh! Mademoiselle Genevieve! I see you brought company today. I’ll see to it that they bring an extra chair to your table.” After a quick bow, he left.

“Claudia, that was chef Remy. He’s the owner of this restaurant.”

The man-turned-girl couldn’t help but ask, “You have a table here?”

Laughing, Gene responded, “One day, I grew tired of making reservations and asked for a table. Since I eat here almost every day, Remy decorated a room especially for me.”

Cloud didn’t even want to think how much money his companion spent there to receive that treatment.

000

As they entered Gene’s “booth”, his jaw detached from his face in a most unseemly way. Decorated indeed! There was even a life-sized portrait of the woman on the door. Cloud had to suppress a laugh when he saw the comfortable-looking chair, for a golden plaque rested innocently on it—a golden plaque with Genevieve Rhapsodos engraved on it.

As if sensing his mirth, said woman commented, “Every single time we came here, I’d sit on this chair. One day, Sapphire commented I should have my name written on it. Since I couldn’t really write on a century old antique, she presented me with this plaque instead.”

Screw gaping! His jaw had probably left a dent on the floor; it was such a foreign thought he momentarily blanked.

Sephiroth made a joke.

Damn, every time he thought this universe couldn’t get weirder, someone threw a brick at common sense and dunked reality in Tifa’s secret one-hit-KOcktail.


	4. Lunch with Genevieve part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What are Genevieve's intentions? Is Cloud's chastity at risk?

The author would like to announce her brain has finally melted. In order to wrap this story up and give Cloud some closure, this is the last chapter:

On the way back to the Shinra main building, a giant crate fell on Cloud’s head. He woke up to find the last months were all a (bad?) dream.

Tifa hugged him, they married and had a dozen kids.

The End.

000

That was tempting. Except there hasn’t been enough ecchi/fan(dis)service yet.

So, last time, in S(OW)A…

Sephiroth joked, which leads us to the current situation.

000

Beep beep beep.

_Drip_ drip _drip_.

Pain pain pain **_painpainpainpain_**.

**_Black_ ** _. **Black** all _ ** around ** _. Where_ is _light?_ **What** _is light?_

Hotcoldhotcodsalmonsquidshrimpcrampcrapdamn.

“Stay with us, Cloud!”

“Don’t follow the damn light!”

“I’m so sorry! I didn’t know you were—”

A soft voice… “Cloud, I did my best, but… I’m sorry.”

Beep beep beepbeepbeepbeeeeeeeep.

Pause.

“NO!”

He opened his eyes and saw nothing.

Getting up, he walked aimlessly.

-it’s so **easy** to **lose** track of **_time_** here-

“She was a boy, he was a girl~”

“Still singing that silly song?”

“Hello to you too, Cloud.” A (familiar, _-craved-_ haunting) voice echoed from all directions. It was somewhere, everywhere, nowhere, all at once and none at once.

“I’m dead.” No helloes, no names; only a matter-of-fact statement. Almost _–uncaring-_ resigned.

“Not even a ‘how are you’? But yes, you’re dead.” She looked away. Shrugged and continued, “Been dead for some months, actually.”

“Then… it _[this world, second chance]_ was all a lie.”

“Not quite.” Seemingly ignoring his confusion, she continued, “It was not your time yet, so I bargained for a _second chance of sorts_. These people… they are as real as we were." (As real as we were? The way you put it, it’s almost as if we _weren’t_ real, he thought idly)

Twirling around, she raised her arms. “It’s complicated —and I still don’t get it myself. Time is flowing in all directions, all the, excuse the wording, time. Each decision, each variable becomes its own dimension.” At this, she started drawing on air. “Look, imagine this was your conception.” A blue chocobo appeared on air (void?). “There was a fifty percent chance your chromossomes would be XY or XX. Well, not exactly fifty. You could have been XXX, XXY, XYY… anyway. In our universe, you were obviously a male, but here,” She drew a pink chocobo, “you were born a female. Not only that, but in this specific dimension, everybody was born the exact opposite gender.”

He frowned, “As far as I’ve seen, the main events were pretty similar in both worlds. How come?”

Aerith smiled. “Ah, this is my favorite part, actually!” Pushing round glasses up her face (where did she get them?), the ex-flower girl made a very fine impression of mad scholar. “You see, all the dimensions started in the same point and branched from there, like a tree. Their essences are still the same… well, except for a certain oddball dimension that doesn’t fit anywhere.” She mumbled, “really, HojoxGLaDOS? She wasn’t even created by a Japanese company!”

Cloud raised an eyebrow, “What?”

Blushing, the girl waved her hands dismissively, “Nothing.”

_“Please don’t punch the fourth wall again. It has already cracked in several places.”_

“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what? Must be your imagination. So, as I was saying,” Aerith looked around shiftily, “The exact moment of your death, these dimensions overlapped, and I managed to bring your soul to this one.”

“So I Killed the real Claudia?”

“Technically, you are the same person, so no. Maybe?” She tilted her head and continued airily, “Who knows…” Suddenly, as if struck by a six foot katana-like sword, her eyes widened. “Oh, our time is coming to a close. You see, this literallilily-ish literal featureless plane of floating dialogue is the void between dimensions. The dimensions are separating again, so this is it.” Her voice distorted with the distance.

“Wait!” He tried to grab the fading wisps of his dear friend’s projection. “And I never got to say good bye. Again.”

A now disembodied voice chided, “Don’t be silly! Our dimensions should overlap again in four months. Until then… so long and thanks for all the fish!”

He was left alone, waving mechanically.

_‘Fish…?’_

000

“And so the Sleeping Beauty awakens!”

Dazedly, Cloud looked around. ‘I hope dazedly waking up in unfamiliar places doesn’t become an habit.’ “Where am I?”

“This is the second time you faint in my presence. Am I that gorgeous?” _Did Genesis wink flirtatiously at him? His own cheeks were oddly warm… No. Effing. Way._

He was mercifully saved from having to answer by a soft knock on the door. “Mademoiselles, your food is ready.”

000

After the most expensive meal Cloud had ever eaten, Genevieve dragged him to the pinkest -abomination- place he’d ever seen. _‘Today is breaking many records already’._

Thankfully, they went right past it… to the even frillier undergarments boutique next door. ‘Well, at least it’s not pink’

Genevieve grabbed a basket and started throwing in random pieces of brassiere. Well, they were plain and seemed practical enough, so he didn’t comment. He did protest when the woman shoved him in a booth and locked the door from the inside… “Er, shouldn’t you wait outside?”

“I have to make sure it’s the right size and you can move properly with it.”

He was almost reaching for the hem of his shirt, but stopped when Genevieve didn’t even look away. “Could you please turn away while I’m changing?”

“Oh, of course.” And she turned away in a deliberately slow pace.

Perfect fit. All of them. ‘She _is_ a woman,’ he mentally reasoned.

000

“So, how was your date?”

Cloud choked on his tea, “Excuse me?” His loud exclamation momentarily drew the attention of all the girls in the cafeteria. When he shrunk back in his seat, they went back to their meals and conversations.

“With Gene, I mean. I didn’t know you liked older woman, Claudia!” Zelia grinned playfully.

“How did you kn—that wasn’t a date!” He denied vehemently.

“According to Ragna, you were sighted eating at Le Brasserie de Rats.” Whispering conspiratorially, she continued, “and you later entered that ‘uppity boutique with an overly long foreign name’ and exited carrying at least four bags full of brassiere.”

Cloud fidgeted, “When you put it like that…”

“So, is it true?” Not even letting Cloud answer, the SOLDIER continued, “Ragna also told me Gene guessed your cup size.”

Cloud tilted his head. “Isn’t that an older woman thing?”

Zelia gaped at her naïve friend/little sister figure, “Of course not! And you wear such baggy clothes it’s impossible to tell anyway.” Pensively rubbing her chin, the older girl murmured. “Did she ever, you know,” she made a squeezing gesture over her chest, “ _grope_ you, Claudia?”

_“And so the Sleeping Beauty awakens!”_

_Dazedly, Cloud looked around. ‘I hope dazedly waking up in unfamiliar places doesn’t become an habit.’_

Come to think of it, Genevieve was awfully close to him... oh damn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Question: Aerth or Aerik? Aerith's name is suspiciously similar to 'Earth'...

**Author's Note:**

> I’m a very slow writer.  
> Anyone interested in betaing/collaborating?


End file.
